<p>... Until Mica Scholarship announcements are sent.</p>
<p>I know! s;ldfsd Good luck :)</p>
<p>nothing in the mail today.</p>
<p>why would you get something in the mail?
you think they one day everything?</p>
<p>they sent them out priority, so a lot of people should get them on monday and then probably another wave of people on the west coast like me on tuesday.</p>
<p>MICA packet made it to Florida on Monday with three merit scholarship awards inside. Nice!</p>
<p>I didn’t get mine in Illinois. Hopefully tomorrow haha.</p>
<p>D’s packet came today. Sadly, it doesn’t cut it. $15,500 per year in scholarships, which would mean roughly $30K/year in loans. Impossible for us. I’m quite depressed about this whole thing, but my D seems upbeat and cheerful, since she wasn’t sure she wanted to go to art school anyway and is thinking more of a liberal arts with an MFA in painting later on. Anyone know how possible that is? I don’t know why no college really came through. RISD offered nothing, Pratt about half. Not to complain, as these are nice, but really we have an EFC of $4000, so it’s really quite impossible for us to borrow this amount. Oh well. Good luck to the rest of you guys–</p>
<p>hoveringmom, I’m sorry to hear about the disapointing scholarship packages. I know how you feel; with an EFC of $17K, every school my was accepted to expected me to pay close to twice that for tuition and room and board(other than our state school, which offered free tutition and then some.) It seems like you have to be pretty well off to attend most art schools comfortably.</p>
<p>I like MICA, but have issues with how they hand out scholarship money. I’ve seen kids with dubious skills get great scholarship money and talented kids offered little money. My son only got around $9K in aid per year from MICA. He has a 4.0 average this year, applied for a returning student scholarship, and got zip. I’m not an artist, so maybe I’m no judge of talent. </p>
<p>Your daughter attending a liberal arts school and getting a MFA later sounds like a good option. Frankly, with the current economic climate, I have some misgivings about my son “putting all his eggs in one basket” getting an education solely in art. It would be great if your daughter could get into a good liberal arts school with a good art program that meets 100% need like USC, etc.</p>
<p>Our son has been accepted to MICA and he received his award letter: </p>
<p>$ 36,000 Presidential Scholarship
(allocated over 4 yrs)</p>
<p>It doesn’t sound like he did very well after reading these posts! His EFC was only $8,900. I am surprised he didn’t qualify for financial aid.</p>
<p>I just got it today …</p>
<p>MICA: $56,000 scholarships allocated over 4 years and some other financial aid thingies …</p>
<p>Basically $20,000 per year –> we have to pay around 24,000 per year … which is still a lot for us even though our EFC is $12,000</p>
<p>For Parsons I got $24,000 per year for financial aid + scholarships –> we still have to pay around $30,000 which is a HUGE amount but I think that in comparison … Parsons might be more worth it?</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be hardhearted, but I’m actually relieved to see others got not-so-good aid too. (My D’s was $62K over four years. I didn’t include work study and subsidized loans.) Like lacrossemom, I’ve been surprised and dismayed by the art colleges’ lack of meeting demonstrated financial need. My D too is a top student, 800 in verbal SAT, 620 in math, 7th in class (3.8 GPA unweighted), many 5’s in APs, top 100 in the nation in linguistics, top in state in Latin, etc etc. This in addition to three summers of pre-college programs at U Arts with top grades. Yet nothing. As I’ve said, RISD offered my D nothing ($5K in subsidized loans-woo hoo!). But I had heard Risd’s aid was terrible; I was really hopeful about Mica since I’d heard it was really good. I don’t define the above scholarship as really good, although it’s generous of the donars, as it still leaves us with a rough total of $30K in loans per year. </p>
<p>It seems like art colleges are making the choice to churn out rich artists; if they happen to be talented, great, but the most important quality they’re looking for is wealth. Not to be cynical, but that seems to be MICA’s active choice–unless every single person getting this aid has as low EFC’s as you guys? I mean, the other possibility is that many people have low EFC’s and MICA has only so much money? But really, if we have an EFC of $5K, say, and the school is saying we need to take out $30K in loans per year, defacto they are denying entry. I don’t even know why they bother with the acceptance. </p>
<p>I’m sounding bitter and I apologize. I just feel so bad for my D., who has worked toward this goal (actively) for about four years. It really really stinks to have no money. I want to provide for my children and I cannot.</p>
<p>sketchy, which is your state school that offered full aid? Does it have a good art program? I’m pretty sure my D will take a year off and reapply next year to schools which are likely to give good scholarships/grants and then focus on art as an undergraduate, as well as other subjects. She could double major. I hope this is sensible. She’s such a great kid (Ok, I’m biased) and words so hard. And yes, someone else addressed the ‘lack of observable talent’ thing in awarding money–I mentioned earlier that when I went to Risd unofficially, I was really shocked by the poor quality of work I saw. Really poor, like untalented high school students. As a writer myself (MFA in fiction), i was less surprised, because 1) there is in truth only so much real talent out there 2) all art is subjective so there is a huge amount of posturing and a ton of bs going on and 3) these programs are often a cash cow for the university, so rich students can get in. This whole lack of financial support (which I define as grants, not loans–sorry, but telling me 'congrats, you can borrow $30 K!" is not exactly support in my book), only confirms my rather cynical worldview. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise for my D–If she does her MFA rather than BFA, she’ll be that much older and more mature in dealing with the bs, etc. I hope!</p>
<p>I too received much less than expected. I received about 25k/year in scholarships but my EFC is close to nothing… The endowments for colleges this year have dropped significantly in the last year, so I should have foreseen this, but I hoped to get more from them than from RISD (I received about 36k from them on a merit scholarship). I was a national Youngarts / NFAA winner as well as a national scholastic arts winner, so I expected a little better…</p>
<p>I also did the entire MICA Scholarship essay packet (Fanny Thalheimer, Academic Excellence, etc) and expected to get more than 4k/year from that, since my academics are pretty good (about 3.69 GPA on a 4.0 scale).</p>
<p>I still didn’t get anything today.</p>
<p>Tajutsu, I know what you mean about the academic scholarship. That whole portfolio of writing for a couple thousand? I know everything helps, but still. I’ve taken the hardest courses at my school, including five APs, and I am basically throwing that away for 5k a year in return.</p>
<p>I was surprised as well. I got a lot more money from Pratt, and I know last year MICA gave out a LOT more money than Pratt in merit scholarships. Oh well I guess.</p>
<p>yeah, my D got more money from Pratt too, about $20K/year in scholarships/grants. IT’s all pretty depressing. There is no way I would counsel my D to take on $80-$100K in loans upon graduation from…art school. That doesn’t make any sense at all.</p>
<p>hoveringmom, I know how you feel. I work a 2nd weekend job on a year to year contract to pay for my son’s tuition at MICA. I worry every year I won’t get rehired and how I would pay for my son’s tuition.</p>
<p>Towson University, which has an up and coming art program, offered my son about
$10K/yr in scholarships. It might not sound like much, but our instate tuition is only around $8K. He could’ve attended Towson and lived on campus for all 4 years for what it costs for 1 year of living at home and attending MICA. If it had been my decision…</p>
<p>My son was accepted to UC’s DAAP program, which I really liked. If he could’ve taken a year off and established residency in Ohio, he’d be going there. I wonder if there’s not a great school your daughter might be able to take a year off and do something like that.</p>
<p>I guess it all boils down to hard economics when it comes to aid. Most art schools have relatively small endowments so they can’t offer huge amounts of aid, nor do they have to, as there’s a surplus of relatively well off applicants who can afford to pay the high tuition.</p>
<p>I got $40k in scholarships allocated over the four years which I’m very pleased with (Academic Excellence + Trustee).</p>
<p>Sad to see people not getting as much as expected. I know that MICA tends to give out equal amounts of money instead of a bunch to select individuals. I know no one, at this point, who has gotten a huge amount of financial aid.</p>
<p>sketchy, that’s really devoted of you to work that hard for your son. I think a good education is one of the best gifts we can give our children & I’m sure he appreciates it now but he’ll appreciate it even more as he gets older. My conundrum is that not only am I unemployed (from being a public school teacher, not paid very much to begin with) and am going to grad school (ie loans) in order to complete my cert in special ed, but my D is my second child out of five. I have to think of all my kids. I can’t borrow $100K for one child and then when it’s my fourth child’s turn, for instance, basically say, “Sorry sucker.” I lurch from being very despondent over this to upbeat and hopeful that something will work out.</p>